er him."

The sight of his Missy clinging to the pole brought the old man to his
senses, but it took David and the doctor to drag Courant away. For a
moment they were a knot of struggling bodies, from which oaths and
sobbing breaths broke. Upright he shook them off and backed toward the
bank, leaving them looking at him, all expectant. He growled a few
broken words, his face white under the tan, the whole man shaken by a
passion so transforming that they forgot the supine figure and stood
alert, ready to spring upon him. He made a movement of his head toward
Leff.

"Why didn't you let me kill him?" he said huskily.

It broke the tension. Their eyes dropped to Leff, who lay motionless and
unconscious, blood on his lips, a slip of white showing under his
eyelids. The doctor dropped on his knees beside him and opened his
shirt. Daddy John gave him an investigating push with the tent pole, and
David eyed him with an impersonal, humane concern. Only Susan's glance
remained on Courant, unfaltering as the beam of a fixed star.

His savage excitement was on the ebb. He pulled his hunting shirt into
place and felt along his belt for his knife, while his broad breast rose
like a wave coming to its breakage then dropped as the wave drops into
its hollow. The hand he put to his throat to unfasten the band of his
shirt shook, it had difficulty in manipulating the button, and he ran his
tongue along his dried lips. She watched every movement, to the outward
eye like a child fascinated by an unusual and terrifying spectacle. But
her gaze carried deeper than the perturbed envelope. She looked through
to the man beneath, felt an exultation in his might, knew herself kindred
with him, fed by the same wild strain.

His glance moved, touched the unconscious man at his feet, then lifting
met hers. Eye held eye. In each a spark leaped, ran to meet its
opposing spark and flashed into union.

When she looked down again the group of figures was dim. Their talk came
vaguely to her, like the talk of men in a dream. David was explaining.
Daddy John made a grimace at him which was a caution to silence. The
doctor had not heard and was not to hear the epithet that had been
applied to his daughter.

"He's sun mad," the old man said. "Half crazy. I've seen 'em go that
way before. How'll he get through the desert I'm asking you?"

There were some contusions on the head that looked bad, the doctor said,
but nothing seemed t